PAX West is back in Seattle this weekend, filling both buildings of the Seattle Convention Center with video game developers, tabletop publishers, and tens of thousands of fans over the Labor Day holiday. The four-day convention runs Friday through Monday, and organizers expect it to once again strain hotels, restaurants, and sidewalks across downtown.
A Convention That Outgrew Its Own City
Ryan Hartman, VP of media, content and events at Penny Arcade, joined Good Day Seattle to talk up this year's show, according to Fox 13 Seattle. Penny Arcade is the company behind the convention, and Hartman represents it as PAX West returns to the Seattle Convention Center for another run downtown. The event spans both the original Arch building at 705 Pike St. and the newer Summit building at 900 Pine St., running from Friday, September 4 through Monday, September 7, per GeekWire.
The scale of the show is hard to overstate. More than 300 exhibitors are set up across video games, tabletop, and hardware categories this year, including major names like SEGA, Larian Studios, Double Fine Productions, Bandai Namco, and Konami, according to Noisy Pixel. Seattle-area studios such as Innersloth are exhibiting alongside those global publishers, giving local developers a chance to compete for attention on the same floor as AAA giants.
Opening Keynote and Crowd Size
Riot Games co-founder, co-chairman, and Chief Product Officer Marc Merrill will headline the convention's opening Storytime keynote address on Friday, the first day of the show, Noisy Pixel reports. PAX West routinely draws upwards of 100,000 attendees to downtown Seattle over its four-day run, making it the most-attended video game convention on the West Coast, according to PocketGamer.biz.
New additions for this year include a dedicated Creator Stage and a curated PAX Art Hub, joining longtime staples like the Omegathon casual gaming tournament and live performances from video game music ensembles, per the same GeekWire report. Single-day admission badges for 2026 range from $59.85 for Monday to $88.20 for Saturday, while full four-day passes run $264.60, Noisy Pixel notes.
From Bellevue Webcomic to Global Franchise
PAX has come a long way from its roots. The first Penny Arcade Expo was created in 2004 by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, authors of the Seattle-based webcomic Penny Arcade, and drew just 1,337 pre-registered attendees to Bellevue's Meydenbauer Center before quickly outgrowing local facilities, according to Fox 13 Seattle. In 2009, Penny Arcade partnered with global event producer ReedPop, a division of RX/RELX, to handle logistics, expanding the franchise to include PAX East in Boston, PAX Aus in Melbourne, and PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, per Wikipedia.
Holkins and Krahulik also founded Child's Play Charity in 2003, a non-profit that has raised more than $70 million to supply toys, video games, and therapeutic gaming technology to pediatric hospital wards worldwide, according to Child's Play Charity. That philanthropic thread has followed the convention as it scaled from a local fan gathering into a multi-city commercial franchise.
A Downtown Built to Handle the Crowd
Seattle's convention infrastructure has grown alongside the show. In January 2023, the Seattle Convention Center opened its $2 billion, 1.5-million-square-foot Summit expansion, creating North America's first vertical convention center and nearly doubling the campus's usable event footprint, per GlobeNewswire. That expansion is part of why PAX West can now spread its expo halls, tabletop areas, and indie showcases across two connected buildings instead of one.
Hoodline has previously examined Seattle's $2 billion bet on drawing large events like PAX West and Emerald City Comic Con to boost hotel and tourism numbers downtown. Whether the influx of over 100,000 visitors this weekend translates into a clear economic win for local hospitality businesses remains an open question tied to broader shifts in the city's tourism industry.
